Vassar Students Advised in Use of Encrypted Apps for Anti-ICE Organizing
“Vassar students have organized multiple campus events centered on resisting immigration enforcement”
This is supposed to be a college, right? Not an anti-government paramilitary training camp, right?
Campus Reform reports:
Vassar students advised to use encrypted apps like Signal for anti-ICE organizing
Students and faculty at Vassar College have spent weeks organizing anti-ICE activism through protests, workshops, and legislative advocacy efforts aimed at limiting immigration enforcement in New York.
The activism escalated on April 14 when roughly 40 students from Vassar and Bard College gathered outside New York State Sen. Rob Rolison’s office in Poughkeepsie to pressure him to support the Mandating End of Lawless Tactics (MELT) Act and the New York for All Act, according to The Miscellany News.
Video posted by Vassar For the Many showed one student calling Rolison a “coward” for declining to endorse the legislation.
The MELT Act would prohibit law enforcement officers from wearing masks or concealing identifying information while interacting with the public.
The New York for All Act would restrict state and local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by barring officials from sharing sensitive information with the federal agency without a judicial warrant, and limiting access to non-public government property.
The protest came days before New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced an immigration policy package that included provisions similar to both bills.
Beyond demonstrations, Vassar students have organized multiple campus events centered on resisting immigration enforcement.
On March 29 and March 30, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights staff attorney Sabrina Surgil led “Know Your Rights” workshops for students and organizations.
The presentation warned students that ICE has allegedly targeted students involved in activism related to “pro-Palestine speech, anti-Trump, pro-immigration” causes.
“Over the last year, [DHS and ICE] have been targeting student advocacy re: pro-Palestine speech, anti-Trump, pro-immigration, etc.,” one slide states.
Students were also instructed that ICE agents can “only freely access public spaces on college campuses” and that members should not consent to agents entering private spaces without a judicial warrant signed by a judge.
Another slide encouraged organizations to limit publicly available personal information about students, advising groups not to publish members’ names, legal identities, immigration statuses, or photographs without explicit permission.
Workshop attendees were also encouraged to communicate through the encrypted messaging platform Signal when discussing sensitive matters. They were also advised to leave mobile devices at home or disable facial recognition settings during protests or advocacy events.
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Comments
Why do I suspect that most of the older faculty advising them spent their college years doing anti-war protests. I remember a kid in my intro poetry class at Oberlin in 1975 complaining that there was enough activism, for the sake of activism. The prof, a 1970 grad and sabbatical replacement, promptly ripped that student a new one in front of the class basically saying,”we protested the war because our classmates were being drafted out of lectures. Be grateful that you literally have nothing to protest at the moment.”
grrrrr, “wasn’t”
Here’s an instructive tale.
Between 2018 and 2021, an Australian company introduced ANØM — a secure, encrypted phone messaging app that was immediately snatched up by criminals, organized and unorganized alike. By mid-2021, between 8K and 12K people were using this app, at which time authorities revealed that it had been a big sting all along (Operation Trojan Shield), and they had copies of every message ever sent. And lo, the knocking unto doors was heard across the land.
Now, here’s the kicker — the app was engineered by the FBI. Yes, our FBI.
What are they doing at this point in time — sitting on their nards?
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